Zoe Greer

A Critical Look at the Influence of Language on Personality Science

Zoe Greer profile-picture photograph

Zoe Greer

PhD Student
School of Psychological Sciences

Profile

Zoe is a PhD candidate in the School of Psychology at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. A proud Wellington-Porirua local, she completed all of her other qualifications at Victoria University (2016 - 2020, 2021) while working part-time in the public service. Following a brief stint working in public policy at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (2022-2023) she decided to return to academia to pursue her PhD. During her research Zoe was fortunate to have the opportunity to do Research Away, hosted by GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and by the University of Mannheim, where she works as a Research Associate and Lecturer in Personality Psychology and Social Psychology.

Zoe's research focuses on unravelling the connections between language and personality constructs. How do we define the boundaries between personality traits (e.g., Extraversion) and wellbeing constructs (e.g., Happiness)? What impact has language had on personality trait definitions? How does the language used in surveys influence participants responses? Does 'default' language bias our constructs towards specific social groups? Zoe draws on mixed-methods from several related fields (personality psychology, discourse psychology, cognitive linguistics, computational social science) to investigate these questions, with the aim of deepening our understanding of how language, social norms, social identities, and self-report surveys interact when studying personality and wellbeing. Outside of her PhD Zoe is also involved in several international research groups focused on climate change, body image for cancer survivors, and various social science measurement topics.

Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and English Literature
Bachelor of Science in Psychology (First Class Honours)
Post Graduate Certificate in Public Policy

Research Interests

Construct overlap, measurement confounds, survey research, the lexical hypothesis, Big Five personality traits, subjective wellbeing, text analysis, climate change perceptions

PhD topic

A Critical Look at the Influence of Language on Personality Science

Supervisor/s

Adjunct Professor Ronald Fischer, D'Or Institute for Research and Education
Professor Markus Luczak-Roesch, School of Informatics
Professor Paul Jose, School of Psychology

Publications

Greer, Z., Urban, J., & Koc, P. (2025). Cultural Pride and Political Pride (ISSP). ZIS Database. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12312

Greer, Z., Urban, J., & Koc, P. (2025). Openness towards Immigrant Cultures and Local Attachment Scales (ISSP). ZIS Database. https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12312

Labs

Complexity and Connection Science Lab (Prof Markus Luczak-Roesch)
Complexity and Connection Science Lab at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand